7 rules that you should be following to delight your Ecommerce customers

Satisfaction means that you have met the expectations of your customer; delight means that you have gone beyond them. Pretty much everyone has a baseline expectation of an ecommerce transaction: that they will receive what they ordered in good condition and within the agreed timeframe. The difference between satisfaction and delight lies in going the extra mile. If your customer receives a much-anticipated order a couple of days early they will be very positively surprised.

If you are delighting them whilst your competitors are merely satisfying them, the customer will return to you when they order again.  Delighted customers are also natural brand ambassadors and do your advertising for you, as demonstrated by the Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey, which found that 83% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know.

A free gift. A small freebie can have a powerful impact on your customer’s behaviour.

A thank you note. A handwritten note included in a package is a simple thing to do and will make your customer feel appreciated.

Providing timely responses to customer queries and complaints is vital. A study by Nielsen-McKinsey found that 33% of people said they’d recommend a brand that offered a quick but ineffective response, compared to 17% who said they’d recommend a brand that offered a slow but effective response, proving that saying something quickly is sometimes more important than saying something useful.

The gold standard here is to offer responses that are both timely and effective. If you are slow to respond to queries and complaints, your customers will turn to your competitors.
On top of that, customers who feel angry or neglected aren’t shy about turning to social media to vent their fury in public, and negative messages can be very bad for business. Responding as quickly as possible to emails, tweets, Facebook messages and all other types of correspondence will keep your ecommerce customers very happy.

If you’ve ever been offered a complimentary coffee at your local café or a free sample of your favourite perfume, you’ll know that surprises and gifts go a long way to making people feel special. MasterCard took the ‘surprise and delight’ tactic to an extreme with their ‘Priceless Surprises’ campaign, connecting with customers on social media and offering spontaneous gifts like VIP tickets to the Grammy Awards. Whilst small ecommerce businesses can’t offer such huge prices, the principle is still the same on a smaller scale.

Ways to surprise your customers can include:

How many times have you called a customer service line and ended up frustrated when told that your query is being dealt with, but with no explanation of how?  Being transparent in your communication pulls back the curtain on your company and makes your customers to feel valued.

All good relationships are built on trust, including those between a customer and a company. Transparency is so important to consumers that a whopping 73% of them say that they would be willing to pay more for a product that offers complete transparency in all attributes.

Your commitment to customer delight doesn’t end once a lead has converted into a sale. Treating your customers simply as cash cows and ignoring them once they have made a purchase will send them straight into the arms of your competitors.  Long-term success relies on nurturing your customers and forming lasting relationships, so the post-purchase phase of the customer journey requires focus too.

Here are some ways to keep delighting your customers after they have visited your ecommerce store:

Recognise customer loyalty.You can show your love for return customers by offering them a loyalty scheme, discounts or other special offers.

Customer delight is the result of going above and beyond in with your customer service. Small ecommerce business owners can make a big impression by focussing their efforts on making sure that customers are more than satisfied, something that will translate quickly into return customers and excellent word of mouth. Put the suggestions above into action and watch your reputation rocket from satisfactory to sensational.